搬运 译 Pitchfork评Rihanna专辑 Unapologetic
翻译：Vivian
审译：Ryan-Chopin
排版：Ryan-Chopin
Toward the end of her turgid seventh album, Unapologetic, Rihanna sings a grim rhetorical: Whats love without tragedy? But the real question that she and her songwriters seem to be posing on Unapologetic is, Who is Rihanna without Chris Brown? The album is designed to engage our perception of Rihanna the Pop Star and Rihanna the Victim, and the source of its fascination is the dissonance between the two. Its narrative, about a womans miserable obsession with a man we know to be her abuser, flouts expectation of the traditional survivors tale; we want to see a woman learn from that pain and leave it, not rut in it.
在她第七张专辑Unapologetic＞的结尾，Rihanna严肃地反问：“不以悲剧收场的爱情又是什么？”然而，她和她的创作者真正关心的问题是：“在和Chris Brown的关系外，Rihanna是一个什么样的人？”这张专辑意图挑战我们对于作为明星和受害者的Rihanna抱有的固有观念，而这两种身份的矛盾正是专辑的魅力所在。它讲述了一个关于“爱上施暴者”的悲剧故事，却颠覆了人们对于传统受害者叙事的期待。我们想看到一位女性从痛苦中获得成长并离开，而不是深陷其中。
It was already difficult to separate Rihanna the pop icon, whom we think we know from her glamorous image and her songs, from the real Rihanna, whom we think know from the bruised Robyn F. of her 2009 LAPD police report. Unapologetic courts this confusion. We see the singer as self-possessed (Good Girl Gone Bad), a superstar isolated by her fame (A Girl Like Me) who is full of sexual brio (Rude Boy). This constructed image of power doesnt jibe with her purported rekindling with Chris Brown, who is most notable for Top 40 RB diarrheatics, a decent MJ impression, and, infamously, beating the living shit out of Rihanna.
我们很难区分Rihanna的两种身份：她既是作品背后那个光鲜亮丽的流行明星，又是那个“歌手外壳下”的她——那个在2009洛杉矶警局报道中伤横累累的“Robyn F”。Unapologetic招致了这种困惑。我们看到的是一个镇定自若的歌手(Good Girl Gone Bad),一个被名利孤立 (A Girl Like Me)却充满性能量的巨星(Rude Boy)。那个充满力量的她并不应该与Chris Brown重归于好。后者创作过排行榜前40的RB口水歌，举办过Michael Jackson的致敬表演，因严重家暴Rihanna而臭名昭著。
Much has been made of the couples duet, Nobodys Business, which is, unfortunately, one of Unapologetics high points. They pledge their eternal fealty, suck face in a Lexus, and let the world know that the love between them aint nobodys business but theirs. MYOB is a tall order when your boyfriend once had to do an apology tour that included a stop on Larry King Live with his mom. The songs upbeat tempo makes it a shoe-in single with cross-platform playlists in its sights; she wants everyone to get the memo. But ultimately, its a bubbly pop tune that conjures up historical memory of women defending men who have hurt them.
这对情侣的二重奏Nobodys Business”传达了很多信息。不幸的是，这也是专辑最精彩的部分之一。他们对彼此永表忠诚，在雷克萨斯里卿卿我我，告昭世界他们的爱情与旁人无关。当你的男友需要在演唱会上向公众道歉，并与母亲一同站在“Larry King Live”的舞台上时，当事者希望不让别人插手是困难的。欢快的节奏是这首单曲的闪光点，这使它能够在不同平台进行播放。Rihanna想让所有人都接收到她的“指令”。可是到头来，这首活泼的流行小调也只让人想到了被害女性为男性施暴者辩护的事实。
The rest of the album is a synth-pop slog that plays like the companion piece of Nan Goldins The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. Shes frozen in a relationship with a bad person and tangled in a toxic situation that feels out of her control (SOUNDS FUN, RIRI!)-- themes that are mirrored in Unapologetics surplus of minor-key treacle. The perfunctory Ibiza thump of Right Now reflects badly on both her and producer David Guetta while Fresh Off the Runway is capitalist braggadocio (nonsense grade) so static it borders on unmusical. The Auto-Tune on Futures Loveeeeeee Song feature calls to a mind a dog vomiting while Rihanna, in turn, sounds like shes been roused from a medicated slumber.
剩下的专辑是用合成器流行乐喊出的口号，像是为摄影家Nan Goldin的影集The Ballad of Sexual Dependency进行配乐。她在和恶人开展的关系中寸步难行，眼前纠结的坏形式让她感到失控（Riri,这听起来不妙！)。Unapologetic中过多的小调颤音反映了这些主题。粗糙的舞曲“Right Now”让她和制作人David Guetta显得非常难堪，而“Fresh Off the Runway”则是对资本主义（废话一般）的自吹自擂，它是如此缺乏变化，无音乐性可言。自动调音的“Loveeeeeee Song”加入了一条狗对人类的呼喊，而Rihanna听起来像是刚从药物的影响中睡醒。
Rihannas stature has been built on undeniable singles like We Found Love and The Only Girl in the World, but tracks of this caliber are nowhere to be found. Lead single Diamonds mixes simile, cliché, and metaphor, serving as a potent reminder that someone thought this was the best the album had to offer. Oú est ma Umbrella? On Pour It Up, she sounds alternately robotic and narcotized as she sings about how shes so rich she can pay for a $100 valet service and a night at the strip club and doesnt need friends. Plaintive piano ballad Stay is Rihanna inhabiting the post-Florence pop landscape, all chiaroscuro and natural voice. It is pretty.
“We Found Love”和“The Only Girl in the World”等单曲对Rihanna天后地位的建立功不可没，但这样高质量的单曲已无迹可寻。主打歌“Diamonds”糅合了明喻、隐喻和陈词滥调，仿佛在巩固人们对于专辑最佳的印象。我的“Umbrella/雨伞”在哪里？在“Pour It Up/倾盆而下”中，她描述着自己纸醉金迷的生活：使用一百美金的泊车服务，在脱衣舞俱乐部一夜春宵，不需要任何朋友。她的声音听起来既机械化又愚钝。民谣“Stay”是Rihanna对乐队Florence and the Machine的模仿，未经处理的原声若隐若现，甚是美丽。
The album closes with songs that are more potently disturbing than the attention-grabbing Nobodys Business. With production from The-Dream and Carlos McKinney, Rihanna devotes nearly seven minutes-- a pop aeon-- to Love Without Tragedy/Mother Mary, where she sings, Who knew the course of this one drive/ Injured us fatally/ You took the best years of my life/ I took the best years of your life/ Felt like love struck me in the night/ I pray that love dont strike twice, over a riff that copies from the Polices Message in a Bottle. It then becomes a florid song suite, mixing prayer and star-is-born autobiography. Lets live in the moment/ As long we got each other… she sings, pausing before the stunning Im prepared to die in the moment. Its a curious choice of words in a song that seems to address her life in the long shadow of her abuse: she told police that Chris Brown said he was going to kill her during the beating. The tracks that follow, Lost in Paradise and the awful Get It Over With, further underscore any concern one might have for the pop stars romantic choices.
专辑末尾的歌曲比引人注目的“Nobody’s Business”更加令人不安。在制作团队The-Dream和Carlos McKinney的协助下，Rihanna用没完没了的七分钟演唱了“Love Without Tragedy/Mother Mary”。在Police的单曲“Message in a Bottle”的吉他独奏伴奏下，她唱到：“Who knew the course of this one drive/ Injured us fatally/ You took the best years of my life/ I took the best years of your life/ Felt like love struck me in the night/ I pray that love dont strike twice (谁知这夜飞驰路程上/你我注定心碎/你拥有我最好的年华/我拥有你最美的青春/爱情在这夜里想刺刀搬锋利/我祈祷不要再次心碎)”接下来的词曲开始变得花哨，祈祷中混合着自己的明星历程。 Lets live in the moment/ As long we got each other…（让我们活在当下/只要彼此相爱）”她唱到，声音却突然停止，直到那句漂亮的 Im prepared to die in the moment（我已准备好在此刻死去）”。这首回应暴力阴影的歌曲配上了异样的歌词：她曾经告诉过警察Chris Brown在打她时说要杀死她。其后的两首单曲“Lost in Paradise”和“Get It Over With”让人不禁更加担心她对伴侣的选择。
Its difficult to understand why Rihanna expects her fans to hang in this dark space with her (and Chris Brown). The album is unapologetic but its also airless, nearly hookless, and exudes a deep melancholy. Given these qualities, its hard not to wonder where else the album might have gone. Would it fare better if the topics were the same, but set to songs as combustible as Dont Stop the Music? If her pain and shame and cant-quit-you-babe motif was delivered with some humor? If she kept her personal drama to herself and sang about rolling fat joints on her bodyguards head and did more duetting with the dude from Coldplay?
我们很难理解为什么Rihanna期待粉丝和她(与Chris Brown)一同在黑暗中游荡。这张专辑拒绝道歉，却显得有气无力，几乎缺乏亮点，基调渗透着至深的忧郁。这些特点不禁让人想象专辑本可能呈现的另一番面貌。如果专辑的主题不发生变化，“Don’t Stop the Music”一样火爆的单曲是否能提升专辑质量？要是她用幽默的手法描述痛苦、耻辱和“我不能离开你”的主旨呢？再或者她不把私人恩怨公之于众，而只是歌唱自己贴身保镖头顶滚动的脂肪，和那个Coldplay里的家伙（指主唱Chris）多来点二重唱呢？
On one hand, its tempting to give Rihanna props for broadcasting her all-too-real shortcomings. Shes quite a distance from the tidy narrative wed like, the one where shes learned from her pain and is back to doing p>
一方面来讲，我们很想赞美Rihanna对自己真实缺陷的毫不遮掩。她并没有如我们期待的那样跨出痛苦，继续在Beyonce的阴影下做一个昂首挺胸的天后。Unapologetic让我们直面了Rihanna那麻烦的坏生活。就算专辑获得了成功，对她而言，这也很难算是一场值得庆贺的胜利。然而，专辑最大的败笔还是音乐本身。一首首单曲只是乏味的劳动产物，它们不值得我们花时间听，也不匹配Rihanna的才能。
|搬运、译、Pitchfork评Rihanna专辑、Unapologetic
Pitchfork评Rihanna专辑 Unapologetic 搬运